#(even if sara hadn’t revealed joe as the sacrifice kai would’ve gotten the most votes so saving joe was never really possible)

[saraanzu]

it’s interesting how in the alternate sara minisode ending, her thought process isn’t really “if I loved joe more, I could’ve saved him”, the massacre ending she imagined with him is more focused on her guilt for killing everyone else rather than her guilt for not saving him. it’s “if I loved joe more, we would both end up with blood on our hands, that’s why I shouldn’t get too close to people.”

there’s no english translation of joe’s light novel sadly, but I remember reading a summary of it a while back, and joe actually has similar feelings about how escaping with sara would’ve been a bad choice. as he dies, he has a dream about what would happen: ryoko and all his friends would call him a murderer, he would become a cop so he could save people and make up for the people he killed, but the guilt would stay with him for the rest of his life. he hears sara crying, and his last thoughts are that he would do anything to make her stop.

both of them ultimately decide that the guilt of killing everyone else would not have been worth escaping together. they don’t want to be murderers, and they especially don’t want to make each other murderers.